WOODWARDIA VIRGINICA. 

 COMMON CHAIN-FERN. 



NATURAL ORDER, FILICES. 



WooDWARDiA ViRGlNiCA, Willdenow. — Fertile and sterile fronds alike, ovate, smooth, pinnate; 

 pinnre lanceolate, narrowed at both ends, pinnatifid ; segments oblong, obtuse; veins forked, 

 forming a single series of areoles along the midrib both of the pinnoe and of the segments; 

 areoles fruit-bearing in the fertile frond. Root-stocks as thick as one's finger, creeping, 

 elongated, with a rough black exterior, the interior soft and white. (Chapman's Flora of 

 the Southern United States. See also Gray's Mamial of the Botany of the Northern United 

 States, and Wood's Class- Book of Botany.) 



HE genus Woodwardia is not wholly American, It has a 

 few representatives in Japan, India, New Holland, and 

 a few other places. Still some of its most interesting forms are 

 found in the territory covered by our work. The person after 

 whom the genus was named, Thomas Jenkinson Woodward, 

 does not appear to have had any connection with the history 

 of the genus, but was a botanist well versed in the study of 

 British plants, paying especial attention to the sea-weeds, on 

 which he furnished some valuable papers to the Linnsean Society, 

 of which he was a member. The plants now comprising our 

 genus were known to Linnaeus as Blechmmi. Sir James Edward 

 Smith, President of the Linnaean Society, distinguished them 

 from that old genus, and named the new one for his friend, I\Ir. 

 Woodward. The genus is regarded as a very good one by 

 the leading botanists, and is characterized — in the language of 

 Mr. Thomas Moore, the author of a leading work on Eerns — "by 

 the remarkable indusiate linear-oblong or sub-lunate sori, placed 

 near the costa, the receptacles being formed of transversely 

 arcuate anastomosing veins, which form one or more series of 

 elongated costal areoles." That the reader may understand this 



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